Tribler releases new version with distributed channel subscriptions

Tribler just released a new beta of its Bittorrent client with a new feature that the researchers behind the project have dubbed P2P moderation. The idea in a nutshell is that users can aggregate channels and content and distribute them through DHT. From the official announcement:
"In Tribler V5.2 every user can start their own "Channel" to publish torrents. When people like your torrents you become popular and essentially become the owner of an Internet TV channel. You can moderate this RSS-like stream of torrents. This feature is designed to stop the flow of spam in P2P bittorrent, without the requirement of any server."

Channels can be pre-populated with an existing RSS feed, or personally aggregated by manually adding torrent files. The client lists a number of popular channels and also offers the option to search for channels.

However, the search seems to be restricted to the actual channel name, which makes it impossible to find a channel by searching for the content you're looking for. Users also can't add any description, tags or artwork to their channels. Add to this the fact that I didn't even find an easy way to rename your channel, and you'll see why this is still a pretty experimental feature.

The idea itself of course isn't really new: The original eDonkey client already included the ability to publish collections of files, and Vuze users have been able to publish distributed feeds through the Distributed Database Trusted Feed plug-in and the RSS Feed Generator plug-in since 2008.